and i would burn the galaxy to dust upon your smallest word
by ShadowSpires
Summary: It took almost a year after Utapau for CC-2224 to remember Cody. It took him just under a day to forget him again.


It took almost a year after Utapau for CC-2224 to remember Cody.

It was like emerging suddenly from a fog that had been lightening for months, letting him see through it in patchy, indistinct glimpses. Just enough for him to awaken fully to the world already sick with rage and grief and a self loathing so strong it was an act of will he couldn't even quite understand not to turn his blaster on everyone around him. And then on himself. It was only the sight of the familiar faces, his face, around him that stopped him.

He saw the same sick, desperate realization in a few (too few) of the eyes of the brothers around him.

For a moment he almost broke. The weight of what he had done _(his General falling, felled at Cody's order, no, no,_ _ **Obi-Wan**_ _)_ of what he had become — a droid, a flesh _clanker_ with no more _self_ than a million tin cans — of what this new Empire had forced him and his brothers to do.

Almost.

As he looked around him, at the barren barracks, the the blank white armor stripped of self, the identical faces around him, Cody remembered who he was.

He was the _Marshall Commander._

He was CC-2224, raised and trained and _programed_ for loyalty and obedience.

He would do as ordered.

It took almost a year after Utapau for CC-2224 to remember Cody.

It took him just under a day to forget him again.

It had been too obvious when Roses had started malfunctioning. He'd become erratic, too often refusing to follow any orders but CC-2224's, slipping in and out of the blank obedience of so many of the rest of the clones who remained.

He was still under CC-2224's command, a captain now, rather than the commander he had been under his Jedi General traitor, so his quirks were worked around, mitigated, and never came to the direct attention of the other imperial officers.

No matter his rank, the Commander in Roses recognized that this was wrong, that what they were doing, had done, was _wrong_ , but he still yielded to his Marshall Commander, still followed orders well enough, was still a skilled and deadly soldier.

Then he'd started screaming for Aten in the night. For his Jedi traitor, executed on Utapau along with CC-2224's.

Screaming for her to come back to him.

That he was sorry, so _sorry_ , he hadn't meant to, _please!_

That could not be allowed.

Sympathy for the traitors made you a traitor yourself.

There was only one answer to traitors to the Empire.

When CC-2224 came back from a mission without him, there was a tiny satisfied smirk slashing through the blood that coated him.

No one doubted after that that clones really did bleed red.

The only report he had to give was that Roses had tried to run. That he was a traitor to the Empire and CC-2224 had dealt with it.

They gave him a commendation, and no further questions were asked.

The clones, held as the ideal soldiers by Imperial propaganda, and yet considered obsolete by most of the officers, were _all_ getting erratic. It was thought a waste to just dispose of them, though. Surely some use could still be made of them, first. So they were given to CC-2224. Enough of their programing and training was holding that they still followed his orders, and if his unit got the hardest missions, the ones with the most attrition, well...the clones were supposed to have been the best, right?

After Roses they trusted him to do what was necessary if any of them malfunctioned.

After all, Good Soldiers Follow Orders, and there were none more loyal than CC-2224.

Then another one came back to himself completely in a single moment, awakening screaming in the middle of the night, half mad with grief and rage even as CC-2224 stalked to his side.

Jammer turned his vibroblade on himself before anyone could stop him, horror and accusation in his eyes when he saw CC-2224's face just as the blade sliced across his neck.

CC-2224 took the spray of arterial blood across the face with barely a blink. He stood quietly for a long moment, looking down at _his_ face, now stilled in a rictus of hate and death. He turned his face around to the rest of his troop with an eyebrow raised, silently asking; 'anyone else?'

The few who he had seen slow awareness creeping back into turned their faces away with poorly concealed snarls and grief. Too many stared at him blankly before laying back down to sleep, unaffected by the dead man who could have been them. Who had been their brother.

Those who had turned away vanished within the week. CC-2224 was questioned for that, and for his unauthorized use of the incinerator. It had left his squad unacceptably weak when they had a mission coming up, after all.

His only response was a small, vicious smirk, and the firm assertion that "They were traitors to the Empire. I dealt with it."

He did not receive a commendation that time, but neither did he receive censure.

Another wave of clones, pulled from different parts of the army, filled his squad back up.

Two weeks later, the final shroud of blankness lifted off of one of the new men, and Backdraft stared at him, horrified betrayal in his eyes, and CC-2224 met his gaze without flinching.

This one was a traitor to the Empire too.

Backdraft didn't make it back from their next mission.

He gained a reputation.

They sent him their worst and their best.

The ones closest to breaking, to running, to snapping and taking out as many as they could around them before they were taken out. They gave them to him, for him to squeeze every last bit of usefulness out of, before he did what was necessary.

The ones so deep in the compulsion of the chip that they made perfect shock troops but not much else, and his firm hand got the best out of them, before they too didn't make it back from their missions.

They called him "Kyr'am," the brothers that woke enough to whisper it, before they too vanished; lost in battle in the war the Empire refused to admit it was fighting, the Rebellion it refused to admit it was failing to suppress, and to a razor edged smile from 'Kyr'am' when they showed signs of malfunctioning and rejecting the purpose they had been created to fulfill.

It spread to the Stormtroopers, even to the Imperial Officers. The officers called him Commander Kyr'am, because for all they liked their dehumanizing little numbers, they were an awful mouthful for someone they interacted with personally. He was already so broken, they reasoned. It little mattered what they called him.

He was also called vod'kyramud; brother killer.

At least one clone screamed it in his face, alone on a mission for the Empire, separated from the rest of their squad.

CC-2224 raised his blaster, looked into a face just like his own, and pulled the trigger.

Traitors to the Empire were to be disposed of.

Slowly, he gained a reputation that extended even beyond the military.

No one censured him when he broke regulations and traced a jagged line in gold down the right temple of his helmet just behind his eye.

No one questioned, anymore, when members of his squads vanished.

Civilians and military alike stepped out of his way, and he was a source of endless amusement to the Emperor.

The brush of Force power the Emperor had touched on the mind of Obi-Wan Kenobi's former Commander met nothing but a blank wall of duty and obedience. He'd laughed, at what this companion of his Apprentice's failed master had become. What a very useful sort of broken, was this creature. Oh how it must make Kenobi squirm, wherever that fool of a Jedi had lost himself in the Galaxy, to see his Commander this way.

The Emperor made sure he was included in more of the propaganda for the Army. Let Kenobi squirm, wherever he was hiding.

CC-2224 only looked at him and saluted.

 _Good Soldiers Follow Orders._

So it continued. He asked no questions, and nothing was asked of him, other than that he complete his missions.

Then one day, he could no longer avoid the questions.

The Imperial camp exploded into an uproar as CC-2224's lieutenant opened fire on them, surprise and unpreparedness killing many as Lisak provided the cover fire that got the rest of his squad to one of the transports.

That they got all the way into the air before someone thought to man the guns was an example of just how far standards had slipped since the days of the GAR.

Cody drew his own gun. He'd handle this himself, just like everything else.

He shot the Stormtrooper manning the canons trained at his squad's transport with no remorse in his heart, eyes on the vanishing ship, and no care for the sudden eruption of outrage around him, or the butt of the blaster rifle swinging up to clock him on the head.

His last squad, the last brothers he had been able to find in this force-forsaken army, the result of _years_ of patient planning, and they couldn't even be bothered to wait another hour.

He took the blow that send him to his knees, already laughing. It was the first time in nearly five years that he expressed anything other than calm, or anger, or a dark amusement that disturbed even some of the Imperial best. Not since he had come back to himself only to find he was still a slave.

It was a horrid thing, cracked and broken open, raw and messy and so free it felt like it would shred his soul.

"Commander Kyr'am! Explain yourself!" Admiral Nertah demanded, her voice shrill and grating, and Cody smiled up at her, a predator's smile, darkness nearly seeping from his eyes.

"My name is _**Cody**_ and I am a traitor to the Empire," He said, finally, letting his voice ring through the camp. Saying plainly what he had been telling them to their faces all along. "My brothers never belonged to you, and neither do I."

His mission was complete, then.

There was nothing more he could do. He'd saved as many brothers as he could, smuggled them out to Roses in two and threes as they came aware of themselves, hiding their losses in a brutal reputation and the Empire's casual disregard for its troops.

He'd managed to save so _few_ , and yet so _many_ , more than he ever thought possible. Sometimes he had to strip bare and count the tiny lines he had carved into his own skin with every successful retrieval before he could believe it.

He had still lost too many to their own grief before he could get them out.

Killed too many who refused to believe he was really trying to help them, who tried to attack him.

He would have let them kill him, would have welcomed it, but not at the cost of all of the other brothers he could still save.

Not at the cost of failing one of the last orders he had been given. Given by the only being in the galaxy who had the right to give him orders, just hours before Cody ordered him shot. The order that he set every ounce of his obedience and loyalty on the day he woke to find the world a twisted, shattered remnant of the one he remembered.

 _Obi-Wan's eyes were sad as he looked out over the troops assembling for battle._

 _"Lets bring as many of them home as possible, Commander," Obi-Wan, General Kenobi, had said, and Cody had looked at his General and written those words into his heart for the thousandth time, an order as deep as any other. Deeper, by the grace of a General who *cared,* who *saw* them, and *cared.*_

That order had been his armor, his weapon, over these five last miserable years. Had let him look the Emperor in the face and shelter inside it, inside the loyalty to his General, to his men, to his brothers, that had always been the most integral part of himself.

Now, that order had been fulfilled. They were all safely away from this nightmare.

Now he could leave it too.

He was still laughing when the Admiral raised her blaster.

The eruption of bolts around him seared heat into his veins that had been absent since The Order.

Every other living soul in the camp fell in a matter of moments, and Roses met the darkness in Cody's smile with his own when the Marshall Commander turned his head to meet his gaze as he emerged from the concealing foliage across the camp.

"You're early," Cody commented, rising smoothly to his feet and turning to walk towards the remaining ships. Brothers swarmed the camp around them, salvaging anything useful in record time, a strange-familiar sight of mirrored faces bared, no armor in sight.

Roses fell into step beside him like they had never been parted, like this was the aftermath of a thousand battles in the war, like their Jedi would walk over the rise to greet them any moment —

— like their Jedi weren't dead, cut down by their own Commanders, like a part of Cody didn't ache to march away to find his general, to beg for his forgiveness.

"Only a little. You complaining?" It was too serious of a question, too true and aching right at the heart of it.

Cody bumped his forearm against Roses' as they walked to let him know that his waylaying of Cody's final rest was forgiven. He was here, and he would stay. There was still so much to do.

Roses bumped his shoulder with his own in return, grateful.

"I've sent a group after your escapees. Backdraft's leading them, he's got the fastest ship." He shook his head exasperatedly at the impulsiveness of Cody's last squad. "Musta been shinies when The Order came down. We'll set them straight."

A brother with a Lieutenant's stripes stitched into the shoulder of his jacket and a series of geometric patterns in green down the sleeves bounded up to them, and Roses nodded at him.

"Jasper has a briefing for you on our operations, Marshall Commander," Roses said, voice pitched to carry. This had been his operation for years, but he offered it over to Cody without a moment of hesitation.

Cody looked out over the vods around him. Alive and well and obviously having found a purpose. A purpose they were welcoming him into.

They were all looking at him, even as they continued to perform their duties. Not a single face held resentment, for what Cody had put them through, in the name of their freedom.

Cody was once again surrounded by brothers.

His voice was only a little choked when he said "Very good, Commander Roses. Thank you."

A rumble of approval in familiar voices welcomed Cody home.


End file.
